Back Home
“Eat with me tonight?” she’d asked, and I’d accepted.
We hadn’t seen each other for three years. It would be awkward. Every moment in Vietnam all I could think of was her skin’s soft touch, the way her hair fell, the way her lips seemed always so slightly parted — so delicately, so beautifully. And now I dreaded her.
She didn’t understand me — the new me. I’d gone on to another world mentally after the war, but she’d stayed, and she felt far more alien to me now than the Vietnamese ever did.
Still, I’d showed up for dinner at the small diner in the small town. When I arrived she met me at the door. “How are you?” she asked.
Bad, I thought. Real bad. “Good.”
She took her eyes off mine. “I’m sorry, Ben. About the war. You’re home now though.”
“Thanks.”
She smiled. We found a booth, sat down, and suddenly I felt the old lust creep back into me, burning hot. I put my hand on hers, which she’d set on the table, without completely meaning to. But she quickly snatched it away and said, “So what are your plans? For the future, I mean.”
I have none, really, I thought. We all die. What’s the point? “I’m not sure,” I said. “Maybe travel over some places. Europe, you know. See the world.” I flashed her that smile she’d liked so much all those years ago, but she didn’t smile back.
“I’m glad for you, Ben. I really am.”
I shifted in my chair. “Thanks.”
“If you ever need any help at all just tell me. Let me know.”
What now? “Okay.”
“I know they put you through hell over there. It’s all just fine now though. You’re back home.”
So, I thought, she would act just like all the others did now that I’d come back. I felt my head grow hot, this time with rage rather than lust, but I suppressed it. Time for that later. “Home,” I said.
“Yes.”
“Bonnie?”
“Yes?”
“Come with me. Live with me. Please.” I felt the tears creep up. I couldn’t help it. “This doesn’t feel like home. I feel alone.”
She set her hand over mine now. I smiled a true smile for the first time in a long while. Finally things might be okay, just fine. She would never leave me. What had I been thinking? She could help me without looking down on me like all the others did. I don’t need no psychologist; heck, I’ve got Bonnie.
But then she said it: “I can’t.” She cried a bit, for a long and silent minute. “I’m engaged.”
The next morning I drove over to her house and gazed into her bedroom window. I had a pistol with me. Her boyfriend stood alone, a fancy lawyer-type, dressing for work. I breathed in a shaky breath and pointed the gun at him. For a long moment I stood like that, motionless, finger primed. The power invigorated me. Just the slightest push would change everything. I pressed down a little. Just a bit more now…
“No,” I said to myself quietly. I stared at the pistol with wide eyes. My hands shook. “No.”
I drove home and collapsed to the floor. I gazed down the gun’s barrel with my right eye. It seemed endless within that rusty cylinder, pitch black, and inside of it I doubted myself. A tear blurred my vision. It blended the darkness within that barrel together even more. For a long while I sat there, just sat, wondering about my life and where things had all gone so fucking wrong. But really there was only one way to make everything better now. I knew that for certain.
I pulled the trigger.
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